Collected Novellas: Collected Early Fiction 1949-1964

This is the first in a four volume edition of the early fiction of one of the most daring and influential writers of postwar Germany, a man often called the German James Joyce due to the linguistic inventiveness of his fiction. The novella was Schmidt's preferred form at the beginning of his writing career, and this volume collects the ten novellas he wrote between "Entymesis" (1949) and "Republica Intelligentsia" (1957), most of the them appearing here in English for the first time. The settings range from ancient Greece to 21st-century America, but all react to the stifling conservatism and cold prudery of Adenauer Germany. Bursting with intellectual and sexual energies, resuscitating the German language after two decades of Nazi subjugation, these novellas revolutionized German literature in the 1950s and retain their power to shock and delight forty years later.
Schmidt has been called a "giant of the modernist tradition, an enormously important talent in the fictional line of cruel comedy that runs from Rabelais through Swift and Joyce" (New York Review of Books). This edition of his collected fiction should restore Schmidt to his rightful place at the forefront of 20th-century writing.

"Collected Novellas is an enticing introduction to the twisted mind games of Schmidt, to his unusual prose, his raving, voracious mind. While the themes and stories alone warrant hefty works of fiction—war, devastation, love, art—it's the rambunctious style that brings these themes their power and their immediacy as well as their ability to capture, like Virginia Woolf, moments of being. Only Schmidt's moment is one of history's uglier, that of Nazi Germany, war on the western front, a POW camp, and postwar hypocrisy." (Rain Taxi Spring 96)

"With this opening volume of Schmidt's prose works in English, perhaps he will be recognized in this country for what he is: a truly innovative and witty writer." (Chicago Tribune Books 1-15-95)

"Schmidt defies translation. But here John E. Woods captures his very persona—and gleeful eroticism. . . . Let us hope that . . . this new edition of the early works has the success it deserves. . . . Then Arno Schmidt will assume his rightful place in modern literature." (New York Times Book Review 1-8-95)

"Highly recommended." (Library Journal 10-1-94)

"[Schmidt's] writing is obsessively intense, tactile and visual, crude and allegorical, comic and ribald, Joycean in word play. . . . He is a first rate talent." (Reader's Review 10-4-95)